


Old at Hart

by enjoy_acne



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Dialogue Heavy, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mostly Comedy, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Swearing, Young!Harry, eventual romantic comedy, technically canonical character death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-09 06:36:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5529629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enjoy_acne/pseuds/enjoy_acne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Hart was 90% sure that Richmond Valentine had left him for dead in Kentucky.</p><p>How he was was back in London in his twenty year old body was well and truly beyond him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_“You know what this is like? It’s like those old movies we both love. Now I’m going to tell you my whole plan, and then I’m going to come up with some absurd and convoluted way to kill you, and you’ll find an equally convoluted way to escape.”_

 

_“Sounds good to me.”_

 

_“Well this ain’t that kind of movie.”_

 

 —

 

“Hey, fuck off!”

 

Harry’s left eye was on fire.  He pressed the palm of his hand onto it, feeling the slick sensation of blood on his brow bone.  He sat up slowly and the world spun.

 

“Whoa bruv, you should take it easy.  You took a fuckin’ massive knock to the head.”

 

 _Now there’s a polite way of saying I was shot in the face,_ Harry thought to himself _._

 

“Your glasses got a bit fucked up.  Can you see much without them?”

 

The voice sounded like Eggsy’s.   _Impossible_ , he thought to himself,  _Eggsy isn’t in Kentucky._   

 

The voice seem to interpret Harry’s silence as a ‘no.’  

 

“That’s okay, I can probably just duct tape the shit out of them.  C’mon, up you get.”

 

Harry felt himself get pulled to his feet and the pain in his head suddenly multiplied.  The vision in his good eye was blurry at best.  “Where are you taking me?”

 

“To the closet med bay I know.”

 

Harry would have nodded if the motion hadn’t made him feel like vomiting.  “Who are you?”

 

“Call me Eggsy,” the voice replied.

 

—

 

Harry splashed his face with cold water several times before patting his face dry.  He felt something gently poke at his arm.

 

“Here, I did what I could with your glasses.”

 

Harry was afraid to put them on but he did it anyway.  His world fell back into place.

 

His breathing nearly cut short.  

 

It really was Eggsy, sitting on the medical bay bed in an ill-fitting suit, his expression open and young.

 

The memories came flooding back.  They had left on terrible terms and Harry was at a loss for words.  He knew he needed to apologise.  “Hello Eggsy,” he said instead.

 

“Oh good, you remembered my name,” Eggsy replied with a smile.

 

Harry frowned.  “Of course I remember your na-”

 

It was only then that Harry had caught a small glimpse of his reflection in the mirror.

 

He stared.

 

“Oh  _fuck_.”

 

Harry Hart was twenty years old.

 

\---

 

Eggsy tilted his head as he stared at Harry.  “Yeah, it’s not pretty.”

 

Despite Harry’s confounding and literally painful situation, he was offended.  “It’s not that bad.”

 

“The other half looks alright,” Eggsy said quickly, gesturing to the non-injured side of his face.

 

“ _Alright_?”  He stared at Eggsy incredulously.  Harry was  _twenty years old_  and he was  _only alright_?  

 

Eggsy had the gall to roll his eyes at him.  He pat at the empty space on the medical cot next to him, a few medical supplies balanced on his thigh.  “Just fuckin’ come here so I can sort out that massive hole in your head.”

 

“It’s  _not that bad_.”

 

“Just fuckin’  _sit_ , would you?”

 

Harry huffed a sigh and sat himself down.  He absent-mindedly watched Eggsy dab some cotton wool with alcohol.

 

“This might hurt, yeah?”

 

Harry shrugged.  He was 90% sure he had been shot in the face before, so everything else seemed to pale in comparison.

 

“You should talk,” Eggsy suggested as he cleaned the cut on Harry’s brow bone.

 

“About what?”  Harry asked.

 

“I don’t fucking know, I just need to make sure your speech isn’t slurred like a concussed fucker.”  He tossed the bloodied cotton wool into the bin without looking.  Harry watched it land perfectly in the middle of the bin.  “What do you remember last?”

 

Harry frowned.  “I-”

 

“Ey, don’t fucking crease your forehead like that, you’re gonna make this thing harder to clean up!”

 

Harry tried to relax.  Which was difficult, because this entire situation was  _insane_.  He winced.

 

“Shit, sorry, you right?”

 

 _No_ , he thought.  “Mostly,” Harry replied.  “Where exactly am I?”

 

“My old secondary school, actually.”

 

“Terribly quiet for a school,” he couldn’t help but note.

 

Eggsy ripped open the packet of adhesive bandages, carefully measuring them against the wound and cutting accordingly.  “Might be a Sunday.”

 

Harry raised an eyeb-

 

“Don’t fucking move!”  Eggsy hissed.

 

Harry cleared his throat instead.  “Aren't schools typically locked over the weekend?”

 

“Might’ve also broken in,” Eggsy murmured casually.

 

“Eggsy, you shouldn-“

 

“Alright, let’s just butterfly stitch this fucker up,” Eggsy interrupted as he carefully placed the adhesive bandage atop Harry’s brow bone.

 

With Eggsy distracted, Harry took the time to inspect the poorly fitted black suit the other man was currently wearing.  He could tell at a glance that it wasn’t Kingsman-issued, but could see that each suit jacket button had been re-enforced, which at least seemed to imply that it was well taken care of.

 

“There you go mate,” Eggsy said abruptly as he scrutinised his handiwork carefully.  He stood up, apparently satisfied.  “Let’s get you some ice, your face is still swollen as fuck.”

 

“It’s-”

 

“-Not that bad, I know,” Eggsy interrupted as he shifted the items in the mini-fridge of the sick bay.

 

“It isn’t,” Harry said slightly indignantly.

 

“Sure,” Eggsy replied noncommittally.  “Here, catch.”

 

Harry caught the icepack with his left hand instinctively, before gingerly pressing it to his eye.

 

“Your reflexes are alright,” said Eggsy, slightly impressed.  

 

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Harry replied.  He gestured to Eggsy’s suit.  “Do you typically dress this way on Sunday’s?”

 

“Only for funerals.”

 

Harry paused.  “I apologise, you have my sincerest condolences.”  He adjusted the icepack.  

 

Eggsy seemed to take in a deep breath.  “I was actually on my way to grab a pint at the pub before I ran into you.  Bit dumb now that I think about it, I think I’m just feeling a bit nostalgic.”

 

The words flew out of Harry’s mouth before he could even think.  “I can come with you.”  Eggsy gave him an odd look and Harry cleared his throat.  “A toast, for your friend,” he added, pretending that he had meant to suggest that all along.  “And you can’t do a toast by yourself."

 

Eggsy raised his eyebrows.  “You don’t even know who you’re toasting.”

 

“I’ll know once I have a name.”

 

Eggsy looked so hesitant that Harry was ready to say ‘nevermind, it’s not none of my business’ when-

 

“Harry Hart,” Eggsy said quietly.  “We’ll be toasting the late Harry Hart.”


	2. Chapter 2

It was lucky that Harry was already sitting, because his knees would have otherwise given out and he no longer had his old age to use as an excuse.  

 

He was dead.

 

He was in his twenties.

 

_ Fuck. _

 

“That icepack’s probably gonna explode if you squeeze it any tighter,” said Eggsy.

 

Harry loosened his grip immediately.

 

Eggsy gave him a calculating look.  “You know, it’s probably wrong of me to take an injured man to a pub.  Think I should take you to the hospital.”

 

“Truthfully, I’d rather a Guinness over the hospital,” Harry replied.

 

Eggsy’s raised his eyebrows.  “You drink Guinness?”

 

Harry casually re-adjusted the icepack over his eye.  “I imagine many people drink Guinness.”

 

Eggsy paused.  “No, you’re right.  Well, c’mon then.”

 

—

 

“To Harry Hart,” said Eggsy with a raised pint glass.

 

“To Harry Hart,” Harry echoed as he tried to ignore just how  _ fucking strange _ this was.

 

They clinked glasses and Harry nearly inhaled the entirety of his drink.

 

Eggsy raised an eyebrow.  “You right there, mate?”

 

“I’ve had a rather emotional day,” Harry replied as he lowered his pint glass down.

 

Without warning, Eggsy reached for the hand holding the glass and Harry froze.

 

“What?”  Harry asked.

 

Eggsy tilted Harry’s pint glass slightly and peeled off a small card stuck to the bottom of the glass.  He tossed the card over to Harry’s side of the table.

 

Harry put his glass down and picked up the small card.  It had a 9-digit code scribbled on it, with two additional strange symbols.  It was signed with an 'x'.  “What is this?”

 

Eggsy chuckled, as though he didn’t believe that Harry’s genuine confusion.  “Guess.”

 

Harry frowned, turning the card over.  The other side was blank.  He stared at the 9-digit code again.  He flipped the card upside down, trying to make sense of the two additional strange symbols.  

 

“Mate, it’s a  _ phone number _ ,” Eggsy eventually explained incredulously.

 

Harry stared at the card, tilting his head to the side.  “But then what are these two strange symbols?”

 

“Those are hearts.”

 

Harry was very confused.  “But why sign with an ‘x’?  Wouldn’t that raise questions to the validity of a document?”

 

“Are you taking the fucking piss right now?”  Harry stared back blankly and Eggsy shook his head.  “Guess not,” he muttered under his breath.  “That would be a kiss.”

 

“The ‘x’ is a kiss?”

 

“Yep.”

 

They were both silent for the moment when Harry slid the card across the table.

 

“This must be meant for you,” he said surely.  

 

“Mate, it was under  _ your _ beer glass,” Eggsy replied pointedly.  “Maybe someone in the pub thinks you’re cute.”

 

“Cute?”  Harry repeated disdainfully.  “I am not ‘cute.’”

 

“The not fucked up side of your face is alright.”

 

Harry groaned.  “You’re not helping.”

 

 

\---

 

Eggsy glanced briefly at his phone and immediately moved to stand.  “Something’s come up at work, I’ve got to go.”

 

Harry nodded and also stood, hazarding a guess that the message was likely Kingsman related.  “That’s alright.”

 

Eggsy gathered his coat and made a move towards the pub exit.  “Give me a buzz if someone fucks up the other side of your face.”

 

“Oh, and so the injured side is just free game?”

 

“Lost cause, mate.”

 

“It’s  _ not that bad _ ,” Harry exclaimed for what was probably the tenth time that day.  “How will I even contact you?”

 

Eggsy slid the card back across the table and winked.  “I’m sure you’ll work it out.”

 

—

 

Harry blamed the fact that he was twenty for not realising that the number on the card was actually Eggsy’s number.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, loves!


	3. Chapter 3

_No phone, no money and no Kingsman-issued gear._

 

_Minor head wound, one black eye._

 

_One phone number.  Not particularly helpful, but very flattering all the same._

 

Harry supposed it could be worse.

 

—

 

“Doesn’t seem right.”

 

“You’ll have to accept the title of Galahad eventually, Eggsy,” Merlin replied.  

 

Eggsy groaned as he assembled one of the cardboard moving boxes.  “Can’t I get some other title?  Plenty of other knights around Arthur’s table, wasn’t there?”

 

Merlin placed some frames into a box.  “I don’t think Harry would want the Galahad name to end with him.”

 

“You’re fucking kidding, right?  Harry was a right dramatic wanker, he’d have fucking _loved_ for the Galahad name to end with him.”

 

“You’re right,” Merlin admitted after some time.

 

“I am?”  Eggsy blinked.  “I mean, ‘course I am.”

 

The Scot sighed, a pinched look coming over his features.  “I just can’t believe Harry fucking Hart had the gall to actually die.”

 

Eggsy stopped assembling the cardboard box in his arms.  “I’m sorry mate.”

 

“We were friends for over thirty years,” Merlin continued.  “It’s strange to be packing his life away.”

 

Eggsy couldn’t imagine what the loss of a thirty year old friendship would do.  He felt terrible.  “If there’s anything I can do, just name it.  You know that, yeah?”

 

“How about taking the Galahad name,” Merlin deadpanned.  It wasn’t a question.

 

Eggsy assembled another box, the terrible feeling lifting instantaneously.  “Fuck off.”

 

“I buried a good friend today and I’d like nothing more than to mildly irritate the dead wanker.”

 

“Christ _, you’re_ a wanker.  No wonder you was both friends.”  Eggsy stopped, a flashing light abruptly catching his eye.  He pointed.  “D’you see that blinking light?”

 

Merlin frowned, moving towards it.  “It’s one of Harry’s old surveillance systems.”

 

Eggsy watched the light flicker from red to green in quick succession.  It looked like an old Blu-ray player, rigged for a new purpose.  “What’s it mean then?”

 

“That one of Harry’s old safe houses has been broken into.”

 

\---

 

Harry couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief as he lowered his hand from the biometric scanner.  “Still me then,” he said to himself as he entered the darkened safe house.  

 

He flipped the enormous lever of the nearby power generator and the bright white lights of the safe house flickered on.  

 

He caught a brief glimpse of himself on a reflective surface.

 

“And still twenty,” he muttered with a frustrated grumble, walking further into the room.

 

The room itself was clinical, strictly created for the sole purpose of keeping himself alive with basic rations when he was unable to return home.  There were surveillance cameras in the centre of the room that captured the on-goings of his home and a bed in the corner that he already dreaded sleeping in.

 

He hadn’t required the use of his safe house in nearly a year.

 

Harry fought the urge to dust the entire room, moving towards the desk covered with surveillance equipment instead.  He turned on the monitors and sat himself down in the plain desk chair, absent-mindedly dusting the table as the electronic equipment hummed to functionality.

 

“I’ll go check it out,” Eggsy’s voice abruptly crackled from the suddenly functional black and white-coloured monitor.  

 

Harry blinked in surprise.  “Eggsy?  Whatever are you doing in my home?”

 

Harry squinted hard at the monitor and managed to see Eggsy holding a familiar item of his near an open box.  He felt his jaw drop open in abject horror.  “You’re throwing away my red dressing gown!”

 

He watched Merlin shake his head from the screen.  “Lancelot is closer,” Merlin replied to Eggsy through the terrible audio of the monitor.  “She’s already en route.”

 

Harry scrambled out of his chair in a panic, the red dressing gown temporarily forgotten.  He remembered the new Lancelot, Roxanne Morton.  She was smart, logical.  She would absolutely not believe he was Harry Hart and Kingsman agents had a funny habit of shooting when given answers they didn’t like.

 

He had to move quickly.

 

\---

 

“Lancelot, report.”

 

“No signs that the safe house has been broken into in the slightest,” Roxy replied evenly into her communicator.  “Whoever it was looks like they just walked right in.”

 

“Impossible,” Merlin replied through the communicator.  “It’s a biometric lock.  You can’t just ‘walk in.’”

 

“Merlin, there’s been no signs of tampering,” she replied again.  

 

“You’ll have to forgive my disbelief Lancelot,” he said coolly, “But I’m relatively sure that we just buried Harry and all his fingerprints just this morning.”

 

Roxy inspected the lock carefully.  “Hacked then?”

 

“Not many could get away with it.”  There was a pause on the other line.  “Give me ten minutes.”

 

\---

 

Roxy’s Kingsman-issued glasses didn’t pick up a single heat signature once she was inside the safe house.  

 

“There should be a power-generator to your left,” Merlin said through her communicator.

 

She flipped the switch on, her handgun raised.  She circled the room carefully as the room lit up, inspecting every corner quickly before holstering her weapon.  “All clear, Merlin.”

 

“Does anything look out of place?”

 

“Everything looks strangely in order,” she replied.  She approached the small surveillance set up in the centre of the room and paused at the sight of the desk.

 

“Someone was definitely here, they tried to clear away some of the dust near the monitors.”

 

Merlin scoffed.  “Well, good to know they had _some_ manners at least.  I’ll need you to check for prints.”

 

“Yes sir.”

 

“I’m sending Galahad over to help you itemise everything in the safe house.”

 

“‘Ey, I still haven’t agreed on takin’ the Galahad name, you know!”  She heard Eggsy exclaim through her earpiece.

 

Roxy listened to Merlin’s frustrated grumble as he cut the line.

 

\---

 

Roxy took another photo and labelled it ‘food item 44’.  “So why don’t you want to be Galahad again?”

 

“Because it’s weird as fuck,” Eggsy replied as he also took a photo and labelled it ‘antiseptic spray 2’.

 

She moved on to another cabinet.  “Is it?”

 

“‘Course, we literally just buried Haz this fuckin’ morning, ‘course it’s fuckin’ weird.”

 

Roxy shrugged and didn’t press him further on the topic.  She spotted a clean rectangular patch amongst the cluster of dust on the cabinet shelf and took a photo.  “Looks like something was taken from here.  Something small and boxed, possibly electronics given what else is in this cupboard.”

 

Eggsy sifted through the medical cabinet.  “‘S’weird, if they was robbing the place, you’d think they’d just take the painkillers and sell them.  Probably the most valuable thing in here that’d be light enough to carry out.”  He closed the cabinet shut.  “Only thing that looks missing is a couple of adhesive bandages, the kind you use to hold small wounds shut.”

 

“Possibly injured then,” said Roxy.

 

“Possibly.  A’right, I’m done here.  You done checking your half?”

 

\---

 

A week passes by and nothing of interest comes of Harry’s pilfered safe house.  Merlin confirms that the only fingerprints left behind are Harry’s.  The only items stolen is a cheap burner phone and some adhesive bandages.

 

Eggsy’s doesn’t get much time to think about it anyway, not after flying to Bulgaria and back and stopping a British assassin from murdering a Bulgarian politician somewhere in-between.

 

 _Barely even a chance to think about Harry,_ he thinks idly when his phone vibrates.

 

_Dinner at the Savoy when you are free?_

 

Eggsy frowned at first, not recognising the number when another message buzzed through.  He couldn’t help but laugh.

  
_And I refuse to sign anything with an ‘x’._

**Author's Note:**

> So I originally posted this on my tumblr (https://www.tumblr.com/blog/enjoy-acne) with a completely different but vague idea in mind, but now I think I've got a slightly better but still definitely vague idea to go with instead. If you've read this on tumblr (thanks, you are lovely), you might note that what goes on AO3 will be slightly more edited. 
> 
> I'm hoping this means it just makes more sense, but who knows?
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading loves!


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